several master data configurations for new LIMS deployments, a.k.a. paper-to- by Steven Bates, Ph.D. I’ve led several master data configurations for new LIMS deployments, a.k.a. paper-to- LIMS transitions, for which there’s a certain art. However, it’s just as common for an organization to already have an existing informatics system that they want to transition from to a new system. This has its own particular challenges, but many of the lessons from configuring master data f

A collaborative perspective from Automata and 20/15 Visioneers January 2026 Abstract Laboratory automation stands at a critical inflection point. While technology has matured significantly, 50-75% of automation initiatives fail, not from technical limitations, but from cultural and organizational challenges. Unfortunately, this failure rate is common in Life Science initiatives. This white paper presents a practical framework for laboratory transformation that addresses both

By John F. Conway Chief Visioneer Officer What Disney Imagineers Can Teach Drug and Therapy Discovery Operations About Data and Reproducibility In the early days of Walt Disney’s Imagineering team, the magic was real – but the record-keeping was not. According to Imagineering lore, almost nothing was written down in those pioneering years.[1] Ride concepts and design tweaks were tacit knowledge  that lived in engineers’ heads or in ad-hoc conversations. Reproducibility was e

“The Long Evolution of Scientific Work, and the Disruptive Arrival of AI" by Steven Bates, Ph.D. The latest generation of AI tools has already begun to be transformative to scientific informatics, and this may be only the beginning stages of an even more profound transformation of the nature of scientific work, and of the products of scientists’ labor. As those changes arrive, people are having to grapple with the adjustments in thinking needed to take the fullest advantag